by Rene Fomby
But first, there was the little niggling matter of selling the Turkish bankers on a deal that even she thought was way overpriced. And she had just a week or so before the trip out to Ankara to figure out how to do it.
the secret in the sand
30
Rabat, Morocco
While most of the world faces Monday mornings filled with dread, for Gavin Larson it was the best part of his week. Jumping out of bed just before three a.m. meant catching his kids at eight p.m. Sunday night back in California, just after dinner and well before their bedtime. A good long hour to catch up on events from the past week and plans for the next, then three more focused hours at the computer surfing the news from around the world before heading over to the office, easily an hour before anyone else finally staggered in. Nice and quiet, a terrific way to start the work week.
Pausing to check his appearance one last time before locking the front door of his apartment, he turned right onto the Rue Bani Meskin for the short ten minute walk to the embassy. His dark navy suit hung meticulously over a well-muscled frame, and his neatly combed regulation-length hair was still jet black even after thirty six years. And all the hell he had been through just nine months and a lifetime ago.
Skyping with his son and daughter was one of the few breaks he had left from the monotony of living in Rabat. The first few months had been interesting, getting used to the Moroccan culture and figuring out the souks, the street food and the usual tourist traps. And, of course, driving the porcelain bus for almost a week as his stomach got used to the changes. But now the newness had largely worn off, and Rabat seemed indistinguishable from any other third rate, Third World city. Thank God the Bureau had sprung for high speed internet in his apartment, so he could at least binge watch shows on Netflix and Hulu. And Skype with the kids in 4K splendor.
Within minutes he was passing through the northern tip of La Ceinture Verte—the Green Belt park at the heart of Rabat—then past the Nasr Mosque. The traffic along the street was light at this early hour, and a welcome breeze was wafting in off the Mediterranean, cool and smelling faintly of salt. At King Mohammed IV Road he turned left, tossing a friendly wave toward the news vendor on the corner, who usually had a days-old copy of the London Times stuffed under the counter, waiting for him. The vendor returned his wave with a small shrug. Nothing for him today. As Gavin returned his focus to the street, the newly constructed American Embassy spread out before him, its modern two story white stone and glass facade seemingly shrugging its shoulders at the threat of terrorism that was currently raging across the Middle East and North Africa. Checking both ways, he stepped briskly across the street and headed toward the guard station.
The guard on duty looked up with a smile as Gavin sidestepped the bullet-shaped vehicle barricades and pushed through the front door. “Morning, Mr. Larson. Getting an early start on the week as usual.”
“Yeah, I’ve kinda gotten used to the old routine, grabbing a cup of coffee in the morning, watching the sunrise from my roof and listening to the morning calls to prayer rippling across the city. After that, there’s not a lot to do other than get a head start on emails from the States. Anything new come across the wire overnight?”
“Nah, pretty quiet. Which I suppose is a good thing. By the way, I’ve got a fresh batch of beer ready to bottle, an India Pale Ale that I’ve added some citrus notes to. Thought it might be a good counterpoint to the local food, kind of like the preserved lemons these people are always throwing into their stews. Wanta stop by after work and try a couple?”
“That sounds like a heckuva lot better idea than catching another episode of ‘Orange is the New Black.’ What can I bring?”
“A couple of blondes if you got ‘em, otherwise I’m good. Just pop in whenever you’re free.”
Gavin smiled at that. “Rocky, if I had a couple of blondes sitting around at home I sure wouldn’t be watching television. Or showing up here an hour early, for that matter. But, yeah, I’ll swing on by around six if that’s okay. Hold off on bottling and I’ll give you a hand.”
“Will do. Look forward to it.”
Gavin waved goodbye and headed toward the stairs to his office, really just a second-floor cubbyhole with a commanding view of the inside courtyard, the architectural heart of the embassy complex. He plopped down into his chair and logged on to his computer to check the overnight emails. In the old days he could have checked them from his apartment, but after the Clinton email fiasco the State Department had clamped down hard on security leaks.
Most of the emails were routine notices and reminders, blasted out to all of the agents at his level to make them aware of potential security threats, VIP visits and policy changes. One email, though, caught his eye right away. The subject tag was “New Assignment: Priority” and the sender was the HomeSec interface for military intelligence. He clicked on it anxiously.
31
Rabat
Gavin glanced down at his watch as he pulled his gray Peugeot 301 out onto the bustling street. He still had thirty minutes before the plane landed. Even dodging goats and camels, that should be more than enough time to make it the five or so miles to the Aéroport de Rabat-Salé, the shared military/commercial airport just northeast of Rabat. For mid-afternoon the streets in the capital city were pretty busy, swarming taxis crammed to the gills with passengers, all playing a nonstop, high speed game of chicken, missing head-on collisions and side swipes by mere inches and raising the practice of tailgating to a new art form.
Gavin swore and yanked the wheel hard to his right as a grand taxi jumped out in front of him, leaped past a Suzuki and ducked back out of the way of the oncoming cars. Glancing out of the corner of his eye to make sure he had missed the camel, Gavin turned back to see a blazing sea of red lights. He stomped on his brakes, swerving left, then right, a petit taxi that seemed locked on his rear bumper somehow matching his movements as they both finally came to a screeching halt. Up ahead, a donkey driver was nonchalantly waving a stick at his braying herd, urging them across the street and seemingly oblivious to the blaring horns and cursing drivers.
The plane from Paris had long since landed by the time he finally squealed into the airport parking lot, and racing into the departure lounge he had to dodge a swarm of weary-looking passengers carrying hand luggage who were already streaming outside. Gavin swept his battleship-gray eyes quickly and professionally across the faces of the passengers still gathered around the baggage carousel, searching desperately for someone who could possibly be a match for his target, Lieutenant Commander Andy Patterson of U.S. Naval Intelligence.
Most of the crowd were clearly locals, or the usual tourists from Spain and France who flocked to Morocco to spend a day or three basking on its pristine beaches. A Japanese woman with a large red umbrella was busily trying to steer a group of twenty or so of her countrymen and women toward a waiting bus. Only three Americans were still at the baggage claim—a young couple who looked like they had stepped straight off the pages of Mother Jones magazine, and a striking woman, maybe in her thirties, tall and tan, with honey blonde hair pulled back loosely into a camo baseball cap. As she bent over the carousel to retrieve her bag, Gavin couldn’t help but recall a line from an old friend, something about ‘On the eighth day, God created yoga pants.’ His eyes lingered for only a moment, but when he glanced back up he suddenly realized that she was staring straight at him, fully aware that he had been leering at her ass. Flushing scarlet, he turned his head quickly, focusing on the Japanese tourists, trying to make it seem like he was just casually checking out the scene. But it was too late—she was headed directly towards him, and the look on her face was not pleasant. He steeled himself for the worst, knowing that whatever she had to throw at him, he had it coming.
She stopped abruptly right in front of him, sizing him up. “You looking for Naval Officer Andy Patterson?” she asked, a sardonic grin sliding slowly across her face.
“Uh, yeah.” Gavin was caught a bit
off balance. Not how he had expected this conversation to start out. “I was supposed to meet him coming off the flight from Paris. Are you his … assistant, or whatever they call it in the Navy?”
“Well, for Naval Intelligence, that would probably be an attache. Hence attache cases, used to hold the launch codes. But no, I am not his assistant.”
Her face was smiling, but her azure eyes spoke of something else. Like a hungry lioness sizing up its prey would be his best guess. “Okay, uh, then …” He awkwardly stuck out a hand, more of a jab than anything resembling an attempt at an actual handshake. “Special Agent Gavin Larson. And you would be?”
She smiled, and for the first time there appeared to be a hint of actual humor hiding behind her face. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Larson. Lieutenant Commander Andy Patterson, at your service. Andrea Patterson to my folks back in Montana.”
32
Rabat
“I hope you don’t mind Folgers,” Gavin said as he handed her a cup. “I still can’t get used to the sweet, hyper-caffeinated mud that goes for coffee in these parts.”
“Nah, Folgers is the brew of choice for Naval Intelligence, too.” Andy took a sip and decided to give it another minute or so to cool down. “But where did you manage to find Folgers in Morocco? Is there an American ex-pat store somewhere around here?”
“No, actually, I have coffee shipped in with my regular office supplies. There’s a spot for it right on the standard order form. I guess it must be a common problem.”
“And the government would grind to a halt pretty quickly without a steady supply of bad java.” She looked around the small but tidy apartment, noting a fresh bouquet of flowers sitting in a cut glass vase on the kitchen counter. “I’d have to say, I’m pretty surprised at how well you’ve kept up the place. Judging from my first impression, I’d have expected something a little more … masculine. You know, beer cans, ash trays, the Moroccan equivalent of pizza boxes. Certainly not flowers. Those for me?”
For the thousandth time since their meeting at the airport, Gavin’s face flushed beet red. “Uh, I just pick them up every few days at the market down the street. Helps to brighten the place up a little. But yeah, they’re yours if you want them, I guess.” He looked around the apartment himself, as if seeing it for the first time. “As for keeping everything clean, that’s more a factor of having nothing else to do to occupy my time. Get up, go to work, come home, make dinner and watch a little Netflix. Pretty dull stuff.”
“And now I come around and upset your little schedule.” She smiled and dug some papers out of her briefcase. “Sorry about that. Orders, you know.”
Gavin nodded. “About those orders. You being Navy, I assume we’re going to be looking into something in the Mediterranean? A ship, maybe?”
“No,” Andy answered, shaking her head and causing a small strand of curly blonde hair to break free from her cap. She stopped for a second to push it back into place. “Actually, we’re supposed to track down something in that vast sea of sand called the Sahara Desert.”
“The desert?” Now Gavin was completely confused. “How in the world does that involve the Navy?”
“Naval Intelligence,” Andy corrected him. “I’m an expert in satellite reconnaissance. Imaging. You know, like high resolution pictures, infrared, radar, that sort of thing. The Navy uses that data to keep track of enemy assets around the planet. It’s especially useful for keeping a close watch on Russian strategic submarines. Even when they’re running deep, it’s amazing what we can pick up from twenty-two thousand miles above the Earth.” She paused to open up a yellow, nine by twelve inch pouch, and pulled out about a dozen or so sheets of paper. Gavin could see the word “Classified” stenciled in black letters on the front of the pouch. Andy looked very serious when he glanced up and caught her eye. “Agent Larson, I have to tell you that what I am about to show you is very delicate. It’s not just the subject of the surveillance, but the technical capabilities that are pretty apparent in the quality of our pictures. Capabilities the United States Government would prefer that our enemies remain in the dark about, so to speak. If you want to back out of this assignment, now would be the time to say so. Otherwise, once you take a look at these, you’re in like Flint.”
Gavin maintained eye contact with the Naval Intelligence Officer, and swallowed hard. Once. But the decision was an easy one to make. Hiding somewhere in those papers might be a chance for redemption, a way to get off this isolated rock and back in the game. “Okay, show me what you got.”
33
Rabat
“The photos are mostly from a Keyhole imaging satellite, the KH-12,” Andy explained. “Then we have the infrared images, here—” Andy paused to set a new stack of photos on the coffee table in front of him, right next to the first stack. She waited for a few moments while Gavin carefully poured over the pictures, whistling softly to himself.
“How in the world were they able to nail down this kind of resolution? I mean, it’s almost like you’re standing over the site.”
Andy smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I meant about secret capabilities. This is stuff that gets seen by only a handful of eyes. We dumb it down quite a bit when we release images for public consumption, like when we showed the media pictures of all the Chinese installations in the Spratley Islands.” She pointed to one picture Gavin was staring at intently. “Those infrared images are off the new SBIRS network, the Space Based Infrared Satellite System.” She laughed when she saw his forehead wrinkle. “Yeah, I know, the letters don’t match up. That’s the military for you.”
Gavin nodded. “So these are shot from geosynchronous orbit, too? Over twenty thousand miles up?”
“Well, yes and no. Most of the images, even the visuals, are actually composites of thousands of separate images, stitched together by our SIGINT supercomputers. Since our target isn’t moving, except for the sand, the computers do a pretty good job of lining everything up. And the SBIRS network is really two separate networks working together, a High network in geosynchronous orbit, plus a Low network of twenty-four satellites, now called the Space Tracking and Surveillance System, STSS. SBIRS and STSS are primarily tasked for antiballistic missile defense, but as long as there aren’t any ballistic missiles in the air heading toward us, we can usually borrow some of their assets for other purposes. Like this one.”
“I see,” Gavin said, rubbing his chin as tried to make sense out of all the acronyms. “And what is that last group all about?”
Andy handed him the final bundle of photos. “These are images mostly from the Space Based Radar sats, SBR for short. Like STSS, SBR is a network of twenty-four low orbit sats. Twenty-four is apparently a magic number when it comes to low orbit coverage of the planet, but I think the math would be beyond you.”
“I think that’s a safe bet,” Gavin agreed.
“Anyway, SBR is able to provide continuous, real-time, high-resolution simultaneous radar imaging of pretty much the entire world, and in addition it can give us super-high-resolution imaging of a smaller area using side-looking synthetic-aperture radar. Those pictures are from the SARs.” She noticed his momentary look of confusion. “Sorry. The synthetic-aperture radar.”
Nodding silently to himself, Gavin studied each of the photos intently. “And yet, even with satellites that can show us the balls on a gnat, none of these pictures tell us much of anything about what any of this is …”
“Exactly. Just some amorphous blob located ten to fifty feet below the desert surface. Could be anything. Weapons of mass destruction smuggled over from Libya when the Gaddafi regime collapsed. A gun stash from some unknown army. Radioactive or biological waste. Or just some garbage that got dumped off in the middle of nowhere, then covered up by the blowing sand. We don’t know. What we do know is that it wasn’t there five years ago, the last time we did a survey of this part of the world.”
“Five years ago?” Gavin handed her the small stack of pictures, and she carefully placed t
hem all back in the pouch. “Why so long?”
“Believe it or not, Agent Larson, the middle of the northern Sahara Desert is pretty much the last place we give a damn about in my department. In fact, we wouldn’t have caught this at all, if some junior analyst hadn’t screwed up and fed the wrong target coordinates into the SBIRS computers.” She finished sealing the pouch and returned it to her briefcase. “But at any rate, that’s why I’m here. This is all a big giant mystery, and the U.S. Navy abhors mysteries. So we get sent out on a wild goose chase to southern Tunisia to find out what it is.”
“Why not just ask the Tunisians to look into it?”
Andy smiled at him. “And what if it’s a stolen Soviet-era nuclear warhead? Do you think Washington wants the Tunisians getting their hands on one of those?”
Gavin picked up her now-empty coffee cup and carried it into the kitchen to refill it. “But that’s ridiculous. No way it’s a warhead. It doesn’t even look like a warhead.”
“Right. Which is precisely why we’re being sent to make sure that it’s not.”
Gavin understood that logic completely. “So you’re telling me the FBI doesn’t have a monopoly on the stupidity market.” He filled her cup and carried it back to the living room. “Okay, but still, why send me? I don’t know a thing about Tunisia, even how to rent a car to get around. In fact, I can barely manage that even here in Rabat, and I’ve been out here for months. Why not hook you up with one of the locals from the office in Tunis?”
